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Tuesday, June 11, 2013

PAINTING HORIZONTAL STRIPES ON WALLS (DIY)

I love the look of stripes on walls. Stripes can be horizontal or vertical, wide or narrow, soft and subtle or bright and bold. Stripes can add something unexpected to an area making a small area appear larger, for example. Vertical stripes can make a room look taller and horizontal stripes make a room look wider. Stripes on walls has been around in the decorating world for some time, but it's a first for me. Today I thought I'd share how I painted horizontal stripes in my back entry hallway.

I knew I wanted something to dress the hallway up a bit, and, at the same time, continue the flow of the colors from other rooms in our home. These same colors are in my kitchen curtains. You may remember them from the Parsonage in Washington. I used them as my inspiration, focusing on the color and stripes.

I remembered a tutorial "Painting Stripes Made Easy" that I had pinned on Pinterest. It's a great tutorial written by Kim @ Sand & Sisal. I followed her directions for the most part, but incorporated a few things myself. She gives great details on what to do.

I thought I took a before photo of the hall, but I can only find this one with the painters tape on the walls. The walls were painted the same green as the kitchen.

I had the prep work done in the area a few days before - filling dents and nail holes with wall spackling and painting the ceiling.

I started out with a few rolls of painter's tape of different sizes, a level, pencil, paint brush, foam roller and paint.

First - determine how many stripes and what width the stripes will be.

1. I used pieces of tape and a pencil and put them on the wall to get a visual idea of how it would look.

2. Using my level and pencil I drew my top line on the wall.

3. Align the painter's tape on the edge of the pencil marking. I strongly recommend using painter's tape to prevent bleeding of the paint under the tape. Because my walls are textured, I ran the edge of a credit card along the edge of the painter's tape making sure the tape was pressed down securely.

4. Now I was ready to apply the base coat color/white. I allowed my base color to dry over night, since I would be applying
tape onto the newly painted white base and didn't want the paint to pull
off the wall. I removed the tape that had any paint on it before it dried.

5. The next morning I added more painter's tape using a small strip of painter's tape under my first piece of painter's tape for a spacer. Placing a piece of tape every few inches gave me evenly spaced stripe. I then applied another piece of painters tape on the bottom - creating my stripe area. Using the varying sizes of tape gave varying stripe size.

Note : make sure you paint over
the tape with your base color. This will seal the tape preventing
leaking of the next paint color. If there's any paint leaking, it will
be your base color/same color as the base.

6. Now for the fun part - using a foam roller I started applying my stripe color. I worked in small sections and removed the tape before the paint had completely dried. I did this step to prevent my newly painted paint underneath coming off when I removed my tape. I learned this from a bad painting experience years ago and my newly painted wall paint came off in strips :( The total process took three days, but well worth not having your work turn into a disaster.

Here are the paint colors I used in eggshell finish.

Putty In My Hands / Dutch Boy

Seascape / Valspar

Off the shelf white / Dutch Boy

The brown = Toffee Bar / Dutch Boy

My next project will be to spray paint the door, since it now looks gray next to the white, but I think I'll wait with that project will have to wait until our son's wedding is over and our guest have gone home.

This project was quite time consuming with all the measuring, taping, masking and painting, but I love the end result. It not only makes this area brighter but by using the same paint colors from other parts of our home, it brings a continuity of paint colors throughout the house. My husband was a little doubtful when I told him I wanted to paint stripes on the wall. He said "go ahead and try it, you can always paint over it". But after they were up and completed, he gave them an A+ and his approval.

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Hi, I'm Joy and I call a parsonage home. I live with my wonderful husband who is a pastor. Together we have been blessed with 6 children. I have a love for decorating and making a house our home. I enjoy sewing up things to improve our home and also scrap-booking our many memories together. Thrift stores and garage sales are places I love to find good bargains. I was a nurse by profession but now have the privilege of being a stay at home mom. I love the Lord and I'm very thankful for His love and the grace He has given to me.